Advances in software programming and computing technology have made increasingly sophisticated and feature-rich software applications available to consumers and businesses alike. These powerful software applications provide a growing list of benefits in terms of improved accuracy, efficiency, and convenience for numerous tasks performed on a regular basis. Industry indicators predict that this trend is likely to continue and may even accelerate in the years ahead.
However, as software applications become more sophisticated, their installation and maintenance become correspondingly more difficult. E-commerce and online transaction-related software applications are particularly unwieldy in terms of size and complexity. Consequently, most companies retain a highly-trained technical support group or department dedicated to setting up and supporting various software applications used within their organizations. Users who need a software application may simply submit a request through the appropriate channels listing their specific requirements. The technical support department thereafter prepares the needed computing system (i.e., hardware and operating system), installs the requested software application, and presents the completed installation to the users.
An example of the procedure described above is illustrated in FIG. 1 via a system 100. A user 102 of the system 100 begins the procedure by submitting a request for a particular software application through designated′ channels to an organization's technical support department. Technical support personnel then obtain an appropriate computing system 104a, 104b, or 104c for installation of the requested software application, perform the installation, and test the installed software application to ensure proper operation. The installations are usually performed manually by inserting one or more portable media 106 (e.g., floppy disks or CD-ROMs) into an appropriate disk drive of the selected computing system 104a, 104b, or 104c, usually one disk at a time. After the installation is complete, the technical support personnel either physically deliver the computing system 104a, 104b, or 104c to the user or else make it available over a network connection (not expressly shown).
A drawback of the above procedure is that every request for the software application must be installed from the beginning on each computing system 104a, 104b, and 104c via the portable media 106. Even for highly-trained technical support personnel, such a procedure is often fraught with potential problems and delays. For example, in addition to the lengthy installation time required, hardware and/or software incompatibilities may exist (e.g., a resource conflict between the operating system and the software application). Furthermore, the software application may require one or more patches or fixes, sometimes in a certain sequence or order, that can add to an already long installation time. Moreover, there may sometimes be human errors, such as clicking the wrong button, striking the wrong key, inserting the wrong disk, and so forth, that frequently lengthen the installation time even more. All of these problems are exacerbated when the software application is large, complex, and is required to be installed numerous times on multiple computing systems.
Accordingly, what is needed is a more efficient way to make a software application available on multiple computing systems without having to install the software application from the beginning via floppy disks, CD-ROMs, or other portable media for each computing system.